


Affective Blunting

by a_good_soldier



Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brothers, Castiel/Dean Winchester (mentioned) - Freeform, Depression, F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Recovery, Repression, Sam Winchester-centric, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: Sam seems really invested in Dean and Cas, and Dean for the life of him can't figure out why. Sam, on the other hand, is just trying to learn how to feel.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048791
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Strange fic ahead. I have all these tiny scenes floating around which don't fit into the latest big wip, so instead they're joining the post-show series. The first chapter is about Sam and Dean talking about Cas, and the second chapter is about Sam and Eileen — they're thematically related, but perhaps not really related otherwise. As always, over at [without-quarter.tumblr.com](https://without-quarter.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hi or ask more questions.

“I wanted you back, you stupid son of a bitch,” Dean whispers to himself in the motel bathroom while Sam’s out getting God knows what from the gas station. He lets the words settle into himself, quiet and soft as if they’re any less dangerous that way.

He stands there, heels of his hands resting against the sink for a long moment, before turning away. Like he needs to spend any more time looking in mirrors, hating himself.

Sam nudges the door open with his shoulder, balancing a bag full of shitty snacks in one hand and a couple of file folders in the other, just as Dean manages to pull it together enough to leave the bathroom. “Hey,” Sam says, toeing the door closed behind him. “You figure anything out?”

Dean almost laughs. “No, uh, no. Nothin’ yet.”

He lets Sam walk him through the photocopies in his hands, contemplates this grave plot or that one. Sam’s thinking it’s a whole family of ghosts, something big sweeping this town out from under itself, and all Dean knows is he’s not going to send out Claire fucking Novak or any of the other kids to handle more than one ghost themselves.

Obviously, it’s got nothing to do with him trying to avoid anything at home.

“So get this,” Sam says. “The mom was buried in the Catholic graveyard, but the rest of the family was buried in the Baptist one. Clearly it was a big deal. So I’m thinking, when the United church moved in and the Baptist and Catholic churches went under, it might’ve been enough of a shock to raise all of ‘em.”

“That’s…” _excessive_ , Dean wants to say, but he thinks about how one day he’ll die, probably on the job, probably miles away from any of his family, and he thinks about the things that have kept him away from the people he loves. And yeah, if those things eventually turned out to be nothing, to mean nothing, he might rise from the dead, too. “Okay, all right, I buy it. Hit the cemeteries tonight?”

“Yeah.” Sam laughs, another one of those small ones. “Called Cas in for backup, since I doubt we can get through six graves across two cemeteries in one night just the two of us—”

“Great,” Dean replies, too quickly, so obviously overcompensating that Sam actually winces. Dean doesn’t acknowledge it, though. He pores over the maps, but Sam doesn’t let him be.

“You, uh.” Dean can feel Sam looking at him, but like hell he’s going to give in to eye contact right now. “You don’t want Cas to come?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Dean says, trying to slow his heart rate.

Sam sighs. “Okay, all right, I get it,” he says, “but just— look. It might be good for you to talk it out with him.”

“Nothin’ to talk out.” Dean finally looks up, and notices Sam has his eyes fixed on the table in front of him, brow furrowed even more than his usual. “Hey. _You_ okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, yes, I just— it’s just—” Sam clenches his jaw, tilts his head back and forth like he’s trying to decide on something. “I—”

Dean waits him out. Used to be Sam’d never shut up, used to be Sam was on a hair trigger, could yell about anything and everything. These days he’s quieter than a tomb. Haunted like one, too.

“You know something?” Sam asks — says, more like, voice flat — eyes still on the table, like he can’t even look at Dean. “After all the— all the shit—” His voice cracks, and Dean watches his brother grimace, watches his brother swallow his words down. Dean doesn’t know what to make of it.

Sam says, “Even now, all I want is for you to be happy, and you don’t even— you don’t even see it, do you? He’s right in front of you, and you’re—”

“Sam, hey, what the—”

“I can barely—” Sam’s fist clenches, his big hand compressing itself into a white ball of fury, but his voice never gets louder than his hoarse and stuttering murmur. “I can’t even _feel_ some days. It’s just gone right out of me. And here you are — and Cas loves you — and you won’t even—”

“Sam—”

Sam’s eyes flash from under his hair, God, he’s so big and so small at once. Dean sees the sixteen year old hell bent on taking his SAT in him, sees the eighteen year old who walked out on Dad, sees the twenty-five year old who said yes to Lucifer. “I’m so— Eileen’s so good to me, y— you— you don’t even know, you don’t know how generous she is with me, with what I am, and I love her, you know I do, and maybe one day we’ll— but you won’t even _try_ , Dean. I try every— every single day, Dean, I try to feel about anything the way I used to, before— before, and you won’t _let_ yourself feel it. God. I don’t understand it.”

Dean wonders at him, at the two of them. Dean and Sam have been each other’s brothers for longer than they’ve ever been anything else, like Dean was Sam’s brother before Sam was even born, hell, before Dean was born, but somehow— ”I didn’t know that,” he says, quietly.

“Yeah, hah, well,” Sam says, another one of those laughs that doesn’t mean anything, “now you do.”

Dean lets that sit. He’s not sure what Sam wants from him — not that Sam’s ever _not_ been weird about Dean’s, uh, romantic interests, but this feels. Different. “Why’re you so hung up on me and Cas, anyway?”

“It’s not really about you and Cas being romantic, if you don’t want to be,” Sam says. “It’s about— maybe I just want you to be happy. You ever think about that, tough guy? I just want you to be happy.”

Dean nods. When he tries— when he hopes for something new, something good, it blows up in his face. He doesn’t know if he has the strength for it again, but — for Sam, he’ll try. “Okay. Okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know _extremely little_ about ASL. I have taken one (1) queer/trans ASL class and watched like three youtube videos. All of my knowledge comes from [this resource](https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/syntax.htm) and other assorted Googling. Please please please feel free to correct me if anything reads as strange and you have the energy to do so — I welcome it and am grateful for the chance to learn. :)

When Cas was dead Dean had tried to say it. Sam regrets that he hadn’t pushed him. Hadn’t said, _Tell me_ , hadn’t said, _He’ll come back_ , hadn’t said, _Even if he doesn’t, it’ll do you good to feel it_. Because what the hell right did he have to say something like that, with every feeling felt twice and only by half each time in his shell of a body, first in his skin and then in his heart like they haven’t managed to stitch together again.

These days, Dean and Cas orbit each other in the bunker like two magnets, opposed and attracted at the wrong ends. It makes Sam kind of giddy, in the sense that he hasn’t gotten over his enjoyment of poking fun at Dean’s crushes, and it hollows him out at the same time. How Cas and Dean manage to feel something like that — to feel something real, something whole, to feel _love_ — after everything — he’ll never figure it out.

YOU-OKAY? Eileen signs, brow furrowed. In the bunker’s lights she looks warm and beautiful, not washed out the way Sam fears he comes across.

Sam feels his mouth twitch up, rolls his eyes at himself. I STUPID he signs clumsily. And then he tries, in the face of Eileen’s confusion, I SAD AND IMMATURE.

Eileen speaks while signing rapidly, Sam trying to follow her hands. “It’s not immature to feel sad. What’s wrong?”

“I—” Sam clenches his jaw. He hates himself, suddenly, for never bothering to learn ASL. He learned Latin and Hebrew and let himself get force-fed Enochian and he still struggles with expressing himself in one of the most common languages in the US. And then he closes his eyes and tries to breathe, because Eileen doesn’t deserve his anger. “It’s hard for me,” he starts, slowly, trying to remember the signs as he says it, “to feel.”

Eileen nods. She keeps her eyes on his face in case he wants to add something but she doesn’t have anything to say. Sam’s learned to take silence for what it is with her — presence, and weight, and a question — and not what it is with Dean, which is either conflict or failure.

Sam finally says, “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“No, we don’t have to,” Eileen says, “but we can, if you want to.”

Sam grins. That’s enough, for him. “Maybe another time,” he says, and then repeats himself when he realizes he was looking away from her. “Hey. You wanna go out for a drive?”

She crinkles her eyes at him. She signs, saying the words along with it so Sam can follow, “I’m kind of tired. I had a long hunt.”

“Okay, yeah,” Sam says. He stands up. “What would you like to do?”

“Movie?” she asks. Then, signs, TODAY TALKING HARD FOR ME.

YES MOVIE GOOD, Sam signs. He leans over to press a kiss to her hair, and then pulls back so she can see his hands and his face. MY ROOM?

She nods, and Sam tries not to tense. _It’s fine_ , he tells himself. Eileen knows— she knows enough, or at least, she knows he’s not an easy man to love. She won’t be put off by the sigils carved into his bedframe, by the obsessively organized closet and the incongruously messy desk overflowing with loose papers.

They get to his room, and Sam can’t make himself cross the threshold.

Eileen taps his arm, and he turns to look at her. BEDROOM YOU DON’T WANT?

Sam swallows. He says, “I don’t know. It’s fine. It should be fine. I—”

Eileen waits, but he doesn’t add anything else. She asks, YOU WORRIED?

Sam laughs. He’s been everything in this room. Defeated, depressed. Humiliated. He’s been all of those things everywhere else, too, though — this room shouldn’t be anything to him. But. “I’m not worried about you,” he says, trying to sign the emphasis, _not you_. It's honest enough — it’s him he’s worried about.

Eileen frowns. She touches his arm, and then pulls back. And she signs — oh Christ — she signs, I PROMISE NO SEX.

Sam watches her hands move, brow furrowed. “I— Eileen, what are you—”

She signs too fast for him to follow. “Eileen, I can’t—”

“You’re worried about me in your room,” she says, slowing her hands down along with her mouth.

“Don’t— don’t talk, if you don’t want to, I’m just, it’s my fault I can’t—”

STOP. Sam inhales along with Eileen. She signs, slow enough that he can follow: YOU. WORRIED. MAYBE SCARED. I TIRED. I WANT ONLY MOVIE. MAYBE CUDDLES. PROMISE. 

Sam lets that wash over him, once he figures it out. She has to fingerspell cuddles, and has the cutest smile when he figures it out, which goes more than halfway to making Sam feel okay about the turn of their conversation. Yeah, so maybe he’s easier to read than he thought. Maybe every single person in the galaxy knows what he is.

Or maybe — and this is a thought — maybe Eileen knows what he is, because she knows him. Knows what makes him tick.

Helpless to it, he bends over to press a kiss to Eileen’s knuckles, then her wrist. He looks her in the eyes and says, signs, “Thank you.”

She gives him a smile. She signs: BED?

Sam nods. He follows her into his room, sets the pillows up nice for her. And then she gestures to him, so he settles in, too, takes his overshirt off and his socks and even — when she asks him to do it and turns around accommodatingly for it — his jeans, replacing them with a pair of light sweatpants.

He flops back onto the bed, soft and warm and comfortable, and Eileen leans over against his chest. They sit like that for a moment, Sam stroking her shoulder. God. He’d— he hadn’t realized he’d _missed_ this, missed the possibility of it. Missed being able to want something like this. Missed her.

She pulls out his laptop, fires up Netflix. Sam doesn’t even care what movie they watch, doesn’t ask her to put on the sound for him. He watches her watching whatever the hell she picked, some rom com, it looks like, and he thinks he might be in love. Hell, he just might even feel it.


End file.
